mauls Another homemade HDPE Maul

[Riem]

In my neck of the woods, leather tools are expensive and hard to come by. At best, the more available stuff tends to be generic Chinese imports (not always bad) or very expensive commissioned pieces. Of course one can import, but our currency is not strong enough to give me enough reason to go that route. 

So, I needed a better maul than the heavyweight whacker or the lightweight poly hammer I currently have. And even with the COVID restrictions on movement in place, we can still buy milk in 2 litre HDPE jugs... 

And although I've attempted to make an HDPE maul before - very un-photogenic but functional - I decided to start from scratch. For this effort, my inspiration was this thread: 

 

Below are two mauls made from milk jugs which I melted down using a simple heat gun and two different sizes of moulds. The larger one was "forged" in a slightly tapered crucible that used to be used to melt woodworking glue in a double boiler setup in the era before "white glue" became the standard. I inherited it from father-in-law when he tidied up his workshop before selling his house. The smaller one was forged in a crucible made of a section of 50mm diameter steel pipe. Unfortunately I don't own a lathe, so centering and turning it to perfection was not possible ("my kingdom for a lathe!") - same issue for the handles. However, key to maintaining the roundness of the maul heads were that I maintained a steady pressure by using a stopper piece of the same diameter as the crucible /pipe with a G-clamp and even progressively increased pressure while the HDPE was cooling. My previous experience was that the HDPE distorted as it was cooling. 

The larger maul weights 586 grams (I believe its a cat's spittle over 16oz), 64mm in diameter and the handle is made of an old broken baseball bat I got somewhere. It's got a hidden cavity of about 20mm deep on the north end filled with four or five (maybe six) steel washers for additional weight, and then the washers and nut that are visible. When I can move around more freely once COVID is hopefully boxed up again, I'll hunt for prettier and a few more heftier weights, maybe a brass weight will look pretty, and a proper nut. The spindle (spine) is an 8mm hardened stainless steel rod I had lying around, which I threaded with M8 thread - darn difficult job - about 20 to 25mm of thread on both ends. 

 

The smaller of the two weights in around 356g (12oz give or take), about 48 or 50mm in diameter and does not have any additional weights added (except a stopper washer). It's spine comes from the rod in the gas lift of a hatchback - had to replace the gas lift on one of the children's cars some time ago and kept the old part for some reason. Any case, the rod is also 8mm and similarly threaded with M8 thread. The handle on this one is a bunch of leather washers, cut more or less round and with a 8mm centre hole punched, glued with wood glue, compressed and left to dry/cure on the threaded rod, and then trued and shaped in an electric drill. I'm still contemplating if I should not switch the two handles around... 

Not the prettiest, but - for now - better than what I used before. It feels good to hold and swing and the test run I gave it with a basket weave stamp was definitely an improvement on performance of my old whacker... 

[Retswerb]

Those are excellent! Great job using your resources well. How bad were the fumes when you melted down the cartons?

[Riem]

1 hour ago, Retswerb said:

Those are excellent! Great job using your resources well. How bad were the fumes when you melted down the cartons?

Hi Retswerb, thanks for the positive comment. There were zero fumes. HDPE doesn't "melt" in the sense that it creates a fluid if you can keep the temperature around 180°C - at least if you keep it below 200°C - from what I've read. It merely becomes sticky, not fully "treacle like" so you have to keep pounding it with some form of pestle to persuade it to stick to the rest of the heated lumps. I used a broomstick answer other timber, sanded smooth. 

Key to the melting is preparation of the HDPE - it has to be in really small pieces, like in 10mm x 10mm... I spent a couple of days just cutting up the jugs. The bigger one of the two mauls contains something like 9 or 10 milk jugs, and the smaller one about 7 or 8. Patience and time on hand are key ingredients... :-) 

[MM2CVS9]

Nice! I really like the leather handle. 

 

EJ

[Oldbloke]

Good work.

Be proud to have them on my bench.

Gary.

[dikman]

They look great, Riem. You did very well with the HDPE, it's not as easy as you think to fuse it together and it burns pretty easily if overheated.

If you can find someone with a lathe sometime they'll only need skimming to finish them off.